Six on Coronavirus: Q & A on the G.O.P.’s Call for Elder Sacrifice; The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19; Interactive Map: Coronavirus Cases In NYC By Zip Code; Corporate media shrug as elite declare loss of profits wors
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And please don't forget to check out the pertinent images attached to every post
Thanks John and Gary
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"WASHINGTON — Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.
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The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing, several participants recalled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.
But as the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives.
The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe."
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Interactive Map: Coronavirus Cases In NYC By Zip Code
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When the Invisible Hand Gives You the Finger
"Since the days of Adam Smith, capitalists have been arguing that unfettered markets are the best way to organize the economy. Smith famously said that the rich are “led by an invisible hand” to, “without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.” The rise of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression tempered such magical thinking for a few decades, but the ascent of neoliberalism in the last half century has brought a resurgence in market fundamentalism, in both theory (very much including the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post) as well as practice.
Yet none of the steady stream of articles from these outlets attesting to heartbreaking shortages of medical equipment in coronavirus-ravaged areas in the US—“A NY Nurse Dies. Angry Co-Workers Blame a Lack of Protective Gear” (New York Times, 3/26/20), “Unprotected and Unprepared: Home Health Aides Who Care for Sick, Elderly Brace for Covid-19” (Washington Post, 3/24/20), “NY May Need 18,000 Ventilators Very Soon. It Is Far Short of That” (New York Times, 3/17/20), or “The Hardest Questions Doctors May Face: Who Will Be Saved? Who Won’t? “ (New York Times, 3/21/20), for instance—have stopped to ask why the laws of supply and demand have so catastrophically failed in this crisis.
I could feign surprise at this elision, but truthfully, it does not surprise me in the least. It angers me, yes; but surprises, no.
Americans can rightly demand an explanation for the vast gulf between the ideas espoused by free-market advocates and the failure of the market to provide essential social goods, most pressingly right now, healthcare. But instead, shortages of masks, ventilators and hospital beds are presented ahistorically, as though there is no cause; problems to be solved, but problems somehow without origins. A good bit of coverage addresses some of the political failures responsible for the shortages (that coverage has its own problems, though it is beyond the scope of my mental health to be able to address them here), but economic failures go completely without analysis, even when they are, on rare occasions, explicitly mentioned.
A Washington Post piece (3/28/20) noted that personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers cannot be bought from private vendors “because companies manufacturing masks and other emergency gear are demanding cash payments on delivery.” The same piece quotes Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam: “Allowing the free market to determine availability and pricing is not the way we should be dealing with this national crisis at this time.” But if you’re looking for criticism of the market-driven inability to provide life-saving equipment to front-line workers, you won’t find any in this article. Nor is there any analysis; Northam’s quote is close as it gets.
Similarly, the New York Times (3/29/20) ran a piece titled “The US Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed”:
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The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis…. Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.
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"The U.S. Coast Guard is now directing ships registered in the Bahamas to seek aid from that country first — even if the ships are owned by Miami-based companies. It is also advising ships with more than 50 aboard that they may be sequestered “indefinitely.”
The Coast Guard issued that and other new rules this week in the face of an increasing number of requests to medically evacuate people from the dozen-plus cruise ships hovering off Miami’s coast, according to a public memo. The new framework requires cruise lines to arrange for private transportation for those who are sick rather than relying on the Coast Guard.
The directive’s new rules for dealing with sick patients upends the processes now used by cruise lines for dealing with the increasing number of cases of COVID-19 aboard their ships.
Seventeen ships are lined up at Port Miami and Port Everglades, with more than a dozen others hovering miles offshore. Most have only crew aboard, but several still carrying passengers are steaming toward South Florida ports. In SEC filings Tuesday, Carnival said it has more than 6,000 passengers still at sea. New sailings were halted by all major lines on March 13.
Normally, when cruise ships have someone on board who is too ill for the ship’s medical team to care for, officers simply call the Coast Guard and get a medical evacuation to a nearby hospital. Now, sick passengers and crew could be sequestered indefinitely.
Under the new protocol, ships with more than 50 people aboard are being asked to stock up on medical supplies and medical staff, enough to care for patients “for an indefinite period of time.” All large ships have infirmaries equipped to deal with minor injuries and stabilize patients with more serious conditions.
“This is necessary as shore-side medical facilities may reach full capacity and lose the ability to accept and effectively treat additional critically-ill patients,” the memo said.
Cruise ships seeking to send a sick person to shore must first consult with the Coast Guard, which may now recommend keeping the passenger onboard instead. If the transfer is OK’d, the cruise line is now responsible for booking commercial transportation to shore, a private ambulance, and confirming that there is a hospital bed available for the patient.
The memo also mandates that all ships in U.S. seas report an updated count of sick and dead people aboard each day or face “civil penalties or criminal prosecution.” It refers to this as an “on-going requirement.” Most cruise lines have been reporting illnesses publicly, though not daily.
Ships “loitering” just outside U.S. territory, especially those flagged to the Bahamas, are now asked to seek aid first in the Bahamas, before “seeking support from the limited facilities in the U.S.” This applies to ships that are registered in the Bahamas but owned by Miami-based companies including Carnival Corp., Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean Ltd. The Bahamian capital of Nassau is about 185 miles from Miami.
The new procedures come following the Monday medical evacuation in Port Everglades of two sick crew members from two different Royal Caribbean ships. A spokesperson for the company would not confirm if the patients were COVID-positive but said they had “respiratory issues.”
Another crew member was evacuated Tuesday morning from the Crown Princess, also docked near Port Everglades. It is owned by Carnival Corp. subsidiary Princess Cruises.
And there are more ships on the way. Tuesday afternoon, Broward County Commissioners debated allowing a Holland America Line ship, the Zaandam, to dock in Port Everglades later this week. No decision was reached.
Carnival Corp. Chief Maritime Officer Bill Burke told commissioners the company wanted to evacuate two COVID-positive passengers from Zaandam to Mexico today, but Mexico turned them away. He said Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Martinique, Cuba, Guadeloupe and Barbados wouldn’t allow the ship to dock.
The plan for the Zaandam, as with most cruise ships near South Florida, is to treat passengers on board unless they get so sick they need to be taken to a local hospital.
Last week the Zaandam’s sister ship, the Rotterdam, took on hundreds of healthy passengers from the Zaandam after screening them for high temperatures. Cruise line officials said they hope to also bring the ship to Port Everglades.
The Coral Princess, a Princess Cruise ship, is also headed toward Port Everglades with multiple passengers aboard reporting flu-like symptoms"
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